Pope Francis and other faith leaders have made addressing ‘climate change’ one of most important ‘moral’ issues of our time. During his historic visit to the United States in September, the Pope in an address to a joint session of Congress said, “I call for a courageous and responsible effort to ‘redirect our steps’ and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity. I am convinced that we can make a difference, and I have no doubt that the United States — and this Congress — have an important role to play.”

E&E Legal firmly believes that humanity has a moral obligation to protect and preserve the environment. However, the Pope’s strategy to address ‘climate change’ – which is shared by many other faith leaders, extremists in the United Nations, and socialistic governments across Europe and the rest of the world – will only bring skyrocketing energy prices that have already devastated and killed the most vulnerable in those countries who have employed such policies.

To raise awareness of these failed and dangerous ‘climate’ policies, E&E Legal released a revised version of an earlier video prior to the Papal visit. As the video illustratress, these policies demanded in the name of climate change — which policies no one claims will detectably impact the climate, and so which are now offered in the name of protecting the most vulnerable — are in fact already killing the most vulnerable, by the tens of thousands.

Headlines used in the video come from Europe, where President Obama used to tell Americans to look if they want to see how these policies will work yet whose experiences, curiously, he no longer wants us to examine. Yet we echo Mr. Obama’s now-abandoned call: look to Europe if you want to see the U.S.’s future should EPA’s “global warming” rules be allowed to go into effect. Close examination reveals ugly truths.

This campaign to promote the environmentalists’ energy agenda turns morality on its head, and the public needs to know what, it seems, many advisers are apparently unwilling to let on. The evidence is clear and continued ignorance of the truth should no longer be tolerated, whether by the faithful being exhorted to lend their churches to this cause, or those who are moved by emotional, yet unsupportable appeals to change the climate or help the poor.

E&E Legal Senior Fellow Chris Horner notes, “In no rational world does social justice mean killing seniors and the poor in the name of a political cause; it is only worse that this cause is in the name of ‘climate’ when there is an actual consensus that these policies will have no impact on the climate. However, it is truly offensive to promote it in the name of the most vulnerable, who are the policies’ principal victims.”

Headlines in newspapers of all stripes, left-wing groups and social service organizations cry out about the “scandal” of these many premature deaths. Unlike computer-prophesied scenarios of the future, these deaths are real, they are occurring now and they are dramatically increasing. They are a direct, disgraceful result of government policies in the name of a fashionable cause that we know cannot rationally be what it purports to be, given these policies have no projected climate impact.

We do know these policies and EPA’s imminent contribution will kill more of those in whose name the rules are now promoted. These terrible costs must spread no further, and instead it is time to roll the cruel ideological agenda back. Telling the truth about this agenda’s impacts is an overdue, important first step.

E&E Legal has also made versions of its videos available for Poles, whose government has indicated it can no longer bear these all-pain, no-gain policies, and the French. In December, France will host the talks at which President Obama will agree to a new treaty — which he once again insists is not a treaty, to avoid the Senate having its say — replacing the failed Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto, of course, went nowhere in the U.S. given that President Clinton acknowledged it was a treaty. As with Iran, Mr. Obama is taking no such chances. This does not mean the public and their elected representatives are without a voice in these maters. Congress must block EPA’s rules and demand a Senate vote on the upcoming Paris treaty.

E&E Legal Executive Director Craig Richardson, who authored an article in June responding to the release of Pope Francis’ ‘climate change’ encyclical, concludes, “As a practicing Catholic, I find it impossible to reconcile the policies advocated by Pope Francis in Laudato Si, which have had such a devastating impact on Europe’s most vulnerable, and he and the Catholic Church’s longstanding commitment to the world’s poor and most marginalized. It is my hope that Pope Francis and other religious leaders will rethink their approach, recognize that providing affordable, reliable energy sources is the most effective way of lifting the poor out of poverty, and understand that these failed ‘climate’ policies they espouse are clearly not the answer, in fact they’re the problem.”